@entitworld @enterpriseitworld @enterpriseitworld

RS 20 | PA G E S 4 4 | V O LU M E 0 2 | ISSUE 12 WWW.ENTERPRISEITWORLD.COM

FOR THE CIOs. BY THE CIOs.

FEBRUARY 2018

CTRLS TO LAUNCH
BENGALURU’S
FIRST TIER
4 DATA CENTER

TOP CIO DATACENTER SELECTION CRITERIA

ENTERPRISE Security
DATA CENTER 3.0:
THE HYBRID IT ERA Services Excellende

Growing influence of Cloud, IoT

Technical Support
and Mobility has pushed the Indian
Enterprise data center market to the
second fastest growing market in APAC Availability
and with managed...p18
Infrastructure
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EDITOR’S LETTER

The guarantee of data safety and availability is crucial for data

center service providers to maintain their customer’s trust.In
terms of our CIO engagement initiatives, we are commencing
our first CIO events of 2018 with the 7 City CIO Dine and
Discourse Event series in March-April. The Dine and Discourse
events have been formulized as open discussion forums for
CIOs and IT Leaders from different demographics of India as a
platform where they can raise questions around the challenges
and issues they have faced with their IT and look for solutions
from industry peers. The events will begin with the Delhi
NCR chapter on the 9th of March before going around the
country to biggest IT Hubs like Bengaluru, Kolkata, Mumbai,
Ahmedabad, Pune and Chennai. The theme for this year’s open
INDIAN ENTERPRISES discourse forum is ‘The transformation of the CIOs role and

EMBRACE HYBRID IT ERA
Enterprise India has been on the fast
track to Digital striving for seamless and secure business
processes to keep a competitive edge in the market. The
right IT Strategy is often the anonymous differentiator
between organizations. Enterprise data is growing exponen-
tially and so is the need and criticality of keeping it secure,
agile and available. The ability to manage data efficiently and
make the most out of it is at the helm of the IT vision today
for Enterprise CIOs. Data has become the new gold and
this has enabled India to become the second fastest growing
market in APAC. As per Gartner, the data center market in
India is expected to touch US$4.5 billion mark by the end of
2018.With Digital India and related activities spurring the
data storage requirement of enterprise India to never before
high, Datacenter Service Providers have been concentrat-
ing on providing better facilities and including the latest
technologies in their arsenal. Another notable point is
the warming up of the CIO community to the Hybrid IT
environments and adoption of services from Hyperscalers.
the road ahead’. These 7 events will also form the base for this
year’s Flagship CIO engagement which will also take a step fur-
ther from CIO200 to expand and include as many IT Leaders
as possible. CIO profiling which is an integral step towards the
Annual CIO recognitions from Enterprise IT World will also
gather momentum in the coming months as we concentrate on
evaluating CIOs and how their technology plans and projects
faired in 2017. We believe the CIO community is one of the
most vital constituent of Enterprises India landscape today and
will continue to expand our engagement with CIOs in terms of
editorial and offline engagements, highlighting their contribu-
tions to the success of their respective organizations. With this I
leave you to enjoy the current issue, hoping that it comes across
as informative and useful for the CIOs as they formulate their
hybrid IT strategies for 2018.
S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A
S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M

COVER STORY SUPPLEMENT

NEXT ENTERPRISE DIGITIZATION FUTURE OF
PLUS

MONTH AND CIO CHALLENGES DATACENTERS

Interviews and Case
Studies
SPECIAL Digital has become the widely accepted dif-
ferentiator in business t been looking upto CIOs
Data explosion has just begun to
gather pace in the subcontinent and
Catch interviews, guest
articles and case studies of
to spearhead this transformation across the organi- with new privacy laws from Govt. recent applications from the
zation. In the upcoming issue, we will take a look at set to come in, India is in need of an Industry stakeholders, IT/ITES
how the Indian Enterprises are chalking out their exponential expansion of its data- Vendors and IT leaders and
center capabilities. We look at how CIOs from the Enterprise IT
Digital Strategies, how the boand what challenges
World CIO Community.
are being faced by CIOs in their bid to inculcate India’s top Datacenters are gearing
digital in the organization and explore new avenues up for the rapidly increasing storage
of monetization through IT. needs of the country.

Send in your inputs to sanjay@accentinfomedia.com

FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 3

CONTENTS
VOLUME 02 | ISSUE 12 | FEBRUARY 2 0 1 8 | W W W. E N T E R P R I S E I T W O R L D . C O M
Publisher: Sanjib Mohapatra
Editor: Sanjay Mohapatra
Associate Editor: Chitresh Sehgal
Designer: Ajay Arya
Assistant Designer: Rahul Arya
Web Designer: Vijay Bakshi
Technical Writer: Manas Ranjan
Lead Visualizer: DPR Choudhary
Social Media Manager: Ravish

MARKETING
Marketing Manager: Kajal Sharma
kajal@accentinfomedia.com

SALES CONTACTS
Delhi 6/102, Kaushalya Park, Hauz
Khas
New Delhi-110016
COVER STORY Phone: 91-11-41055458
E-mail: info@accentinfomedia.com

18
EDITORIAL OFFICE
ENTERPRISE DATA CENTER 3.0: Delhi: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya Park,

THE HYBRID IT ERA New Delhi-110016,

Phone: 91-11-41657670 / 46151993
Growing influence of Hybrid IT has pushed the Indian info@accentinfomedia.com
Enterprise data center market to the second fastest
growing market in APAC and with managed services on
the rise Printed, Published and Owned by Sanjib
Mohapatra
Place of Publication: 6/103, (GF) Kaushalya
Park, Hauz Khas
New Delhi-110016
Phone: 91-11-46151993 / 41055458

MORE INSIDE
CIO TOYS / 41 Printed at Karan Printers, F-29/2, 1st floor,
Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-2, New Delhi
110020, India.
Alaris S2080w Editorial ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 03 All rights reserved. No part of this publication
can be reproduced without the prior written
News ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 06 permission from the publisher.
Cio speaks (Prime Infoserve) ~~~~~~~~ 38 Subscription: Rs.200 (12 issues)
All payments favouring: Accent Info Media
Pvt. Ltd.

26 30 32 34
FIRST COVERAGE SECURITY INSIGHT DIGITAL DIARY CIO TALK
CtrlS MEETALI MANDAR MILAN KUMAR
“India’s Silicon Valley
to get one of the
SHARMA SDG MARULKAR, WABCO
“Need for security in
World’s Biggest Tier DC Environments” KPIT “Transformation of
the Enterprise CIO”
4 Data Centers” “Making ‘Think Digital’
part of Employee DNA”

4 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018

 ITWORLD
ROUND UP
700 Hyperscale Data Centers Middle East And Africa
600 (0.3%, 1.6%)

500 Central And Eastern Europe

(0.3%, 1%)
400
Latin America (3.3%, 3.9%)
300
western europe (18%,19%)
200

100 Asia Pacific (30%, 39%)

0 North America (48%, 35%)

2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Source: Cisco Global Cloud Index, 2016-2021

D ATA
BRIEFING

Cloud to drive 95 percent of

Total Datacenter Traffic by 2021
Cisco released the seventh annual Cisco Global will represent 95 percent of total data center traffic by
Cloud Index (2016-2021). According to the study,
both consumer and business applications are con-
2021, compared to 88 percent in 2016.
Improvements in data center governance and
13.7 Billion
tributing to the growing dominance of cloud services
over the Internet. For consumers, streaming video,
data control have helped to minimize enterprise risk
and better protect consumer information. Security
Number of IoT
connections
B Y S A N J AY @ AC C E N T I N FO M E D I A . C O M

social networking, and Internet search are among the
most popular cloud applications. For business users,
ERP, collaboration, analytics, and other digital enter-
prise applications represent leading growth areas.
Driven by surging cloud applications, data center
traffic is growing fast. The study forecasts global cloud
data center traffic to reach 19.5 ZB per year by 2021,
up from 6.0 ZB per year in 2016 (3.3-fold growth or
a 27 percent compound annual growth rate [CAGR]
from 2016 to 2021). Globally, cloud data center traffic
innovations coupled with tangible cloud computing
benefits, including scalability and economies of scale,
play key roles in fueling the cloud growth projected
expected by
in the study. Additionally, the growth of Internet of 2021, up from
Things (IoT) applications such as smart cars, smart
cities, connected health and digital utilities requires
5.8 billion in
scalable computing and storage solutions to accom- 2016.
modate new and expanding data center demands. By
2021, Cisco expects IoT connections to reach 13.7 Source: Cisco Global
billion, up from 5.8 billion in 2016. Cloud Index

6 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018

ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

HPE’s new Customer Google Cloud

Experience Center adds wings AutoML to bring AI
to Indian Smart Cities to every business

Google announced Cloud AutoML, a product that

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) India
announced the launch of a Customer
Experience Center (CEC) in Gurugram
to showcase and demonstrate IoT-based
smart city solutions. The facility will feature
a wide-range of innovative offerings for
smart city projects from HPE, and powered
by Intel architecture.
By launching this CEC, HPE will enable
partners and customers to experience
cutting-edge technologies first hand that
can help in the seamless development of
smart city projects across the country. HPE
along with Intel and other smart solution
providers, will offer governments and city
administrations excellent opportunity to
accelerate time to value and deliver new,
innovative, and interactive services to
the citizens through IoT. The CEC will
demonstrate IoT-based smart city solutions
that address the complex and fragmented
ecosystem that exists within IoT environ-
ments.Recently, the Bhopal Smart City
Development Corporation selected HPE
Universal IoT Platform to create India’s first
cloud-based ICCC, which with its multi-
tenancy capabilities will be able to run
several city command center operations
in parallel across seven cities in Madhya
Pradesh.
enables businesses with limited machine learning
expertise to build high quality, custom AI models to
improve their product or service. Cloud AutoML is a
simple, secure and flexible ML service that lets busi-
nesses and developers train custom vision models for
their own use cases.
To make AI accessible to every business, busi-
nesses with limited ML expertise can leverage Cloud
AutoML to start building their own high quality
custom models by leveraging advanced techniques
like learning2learn and transfer learning from
Google. Cloud AutoML will make AI experts even
more productive, advance new fields in AI and help
less-skilled engineers build powerful AI systems.
Google’s first Cloud AutoML release is Cloud
AutoML Vision, a service that makes it faster and
easier to create custom ML models for image recogni-
tion. Cloud AutoML’s technology is already enabling
businesses such as Disney Consumer Products
and Interactive Media to build vision models to
annotate its products with Disney characters, product
categories, and colors.

GLOBEL EVENTS

26 – 28 FEB 5 - 7 MARCH 9 –12 MARCH 23 MARCH

2018
Cape Town, South Africa
DataCon Africa 2018 will
feature case studies on
practical uses cases of
data analytics, data science
and in-depth discussions
on key topics
DATACON AFRICA 2018
2018 2018 2018
Johannesburg, South Shanghai, China London, United
Africa ICBDA 2018 provides Kingdom
Forum where senior a leading forum for Event on informatics
digital leaders can disseminating the latest and other areas like
gather to discuss the research in Big Data AI, ML aided diagnosis
intricate reality of their Research, Development, with appropriate clinical
transitional roles. and Application. applications.
CHIEF DIGITAL 3RD INTERNATIONAL ARTIFICIAL
OFFICER AFRICA 2018 CONFERENCE ON BIG INTELLIGENCE IN
DATA ANALYSIS IMAGING 2018

8 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018

 Enterprise NAS

TES-x85U Series

QES or QTS
Enterprise-class Application and storage
operating system operating system

TES-1885U

Dual OS options provides the choice of high-availability or versatility

QES - Specially designed for enter-
prise storage
Uses ZFS (the best file system for business data storage) and
supports multiple advanced functions for high-end
enterprise storage such as data deduplication, in-line
compression for optimized VDI storage performance,
self-healing, near-limitless Snapshots and SnapSync.
QTS - All-in-one application and
storage operating system
Supports auto-tiering storage optimization with Qtier,
block-based snapshots, and SSD caching. Also provides rich
business-ready apps (Virtualization Station, Container
Station, web server, VPN server and more) for a comprehen-
sive all-in-one NAS solution.

Powered by Intel™ Xeon D processors

The TES-x85U series is powered by Intel® Xeon® D 64-bit SoC processors with
integrated PCH (6-core and 8-core respectively) which provides outstanding
performance for data transmission and applications.
Intel ® Xeon ®
Processor D

QNAP Systems Inc., (INDIA) | indiasales@qnap.com

Challam Towers, New No. 113, Dr. Radha Krishan Salai Road,
Copyright © 2018 QNAP Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Myalpore, Chennai - 600 004 Tamil Nadu
https://www.qnap.com/en-in/
ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF
GLOBAL
UPDATE
5G, Smart Cities, AI,
IoT, AR, VR Innovations
dazzle at CES 2018
More than 3,900 exhibitors show-
cased world-changing technologies
that spanned more than 2.75 million
net square feet of exhibit space
across Las Vegas - the largest show
floor in CES’ 51 year history. With
a global interest, the event garnered
860,732 tweets about CES 2018
and 450,554 uses of the #CES2018
hashtag.
KPIT, Birlasoft co-create companies in ‘Automotive
Engineering & Mobility’ and ‘Digital Services’ space
10 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018
From major international brands
to the more than 900 startups par-
ticipating in Eureka Park, CES 2018
truly reflected the vibrant global
tech industry. Watch keynotes and
conference sessions from #CES2018
online at CES.tech/live.
As per sources, CES2019 is
scheduled for Jan. 8-11, 2019, in Las
Vegas, NV.
The KPIT promoters join The
CK Birla Group owned Birlasoft,
in launching an open offer for
the minority shareholders of
KPIT. KPIT and the CK Birla
Group owned Birlasoft, will
work closely to first merge
Birlasoft into KPIT and later split
the combined entity of KPIT
BOOK SHELF
The Digital Matrix:
New Rules for Business
Transformation through
Technology
AUTHOR
VENKAT
VENKATRAMAN
PRICE
953.00
(HARDCOVER)
AVAILABLE AT
AMAZON.IN
About The Book
Is your business ready to win in the digital future or
destined to be disrupted? The Digital Matrix under-
stands rethinking business models from the outside
in, assemble the right team for the journey ahead, and
make bold strategic choices along the three phases of
digital transformation.
Key Features
The book covers topics like navigating digital
ecosystems, discovering ways of competing
and collaborating with other companies to
create and capture value, experimenting with
new ideas, re-examining core beliefs, and
reinventing business rulebook for the digital
future.
and Birlasoft into two public Engineering business of KPIT
companies: USD 200+ million and creates new Digital Business
company focused on Automo- IT Services company will grow
tive Engineering and Mobility the Birlasoft brand by combining
Solutions and a USD 500+ mil- it with the KPIT ITSS businessK-
lion Enterprise Digital Business PIT and, Birlasoft, a part of the
IT Services Company. Creates USD 1.6 billion diversified CK
new KPIT Technologies which Birla Group, together of KPIT
will evolve from the current and Birlasoft.
 Conceptualised in Association with

National Productivity Council

Under Ministry of Commerce & Industry, Govt. of India

Nominate Your Company

28th February 2018
ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

Zyxel NebulaFlex
paves way for flexible
cloud models
Businesses facing the struggle between cloud and on-
premise network deployment will be able to put their
mind at ease with Zyxel’s new NebulaFlex. Currently
supported by three Zyxel wireless APs, NebulaFlex
frees traditional standalone APs to be managed in
two modes – either cloud-managed or on-premises.
Managing standalone access points is straightforward
and it perfectly fits in any small-sized area where just
a few APs would provide sufficient WiFi coverage.
Cloud-managed access points, on the other hand, are

Synology unveils expanded NAS
Portfolio for India Market
Synology the global leader in Network
Attached Storage (NAS), IP Surveillance,
and network equipment solutions forays
into India market with the rollout of its
cutting-edge series of NAS solutions in
the country. With a proven history of
transforming the way users manage data,
perform surveillance, and manage the
network in the cloud age, Synology has
set new benchmarks in the enterprise IT
space, leveraging latest technologies and
unprecedented innovation coupled with
an exceptional customer service.
Four complete product lines of
industry-leading NAS that are designed
to meet different requirements and
needs from personal users, small offices,
SMBs, and enterprises (including XS/
XS+ series; Plus series; Value series and
J series) provided by the company are
now available in India. The company will
also be unveiling the latest DiskStation
Manager 6.2 (DSM6.2) OS update along
with new applications and services in the
country soon.
“India is aggressively marking its
presence as a growth engine in global
economy, owing to an unparalleled
growth in the SME segment. We at Synol-
ogy are committed to aiding this growth
in the country with our NAS solutions
which help organizations gain more agility
and streamline their work processes”, said
Mike Chen, Marketing Director, Synology.
easy to install, configure and centrally manage WiFi
networks from
small to large–
anytime and
anywhere. The
simplicity, limit-
less scalability,
and feature-rich
management
have been luring businesses into the cloud.
Offering the best of both worlds, Zyxel now
provides the freedom of choice with the hybrid access
points that allow users to flexibly switch between
cloud-managed and standalone modes that best-fit
their deployment needs. Users will be able to move
to cloud at any time, without needing to replace
existing network investments or purchase additional
hardware controllers or software. For those who
already owned the selected Zyxel APs, it only takes a
free firmware upgrade to enable NebulaFlex on the
devices.

EXECUTIVE MOVEMENT Dassault Systèmes

names Thibault de
Tersant as Senior
Qlik appoints Mike Executive Vice Kaspersky Lab
Capone as new Chief President Names Alexander
Information Officer Moiseev as Chief
Business Officer

Dan Cooper to lead

Global Imaging
Systems (GIS), A Greg Pelton
Distinguished Scientist Xerox Company Rejoins Avaya
Mario Szegedy to Join to Oversee
Alibaba’s DAMO Quan- Technology
tum Computing Lab Strategy
Ex-IBM Mercer Rowe
to Lead Avaya Cloud
BusinessOfficers

12 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018

 India's IT is moving up
Introducing our two new
state-of-the-art Data Centers
MUMBAI
DC6
∠ Gross Area: 3,00,000 sq.ft.
∠ Rack Count: 4000 racks
∠ Total Facility Load: 32 MW
∠ Total IT Load: 22 MW
1800 103 3130 | www.netmagicsolutions.com | marketing@netmagicsolutions.com
BANGALORE
DC3
∠ Server Room Area: 2,50,000 sq.ft.
∠ Rack Count: 2500 racks
∠ Total Facility Load: 20 MW
∠ Total IT Load: 14 MW
ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF

HP unleashes 3D
Printing Technology
Portfolio in India
Incedo, Tripwire launch Expanding on its 3D printing industry leadership
and momentum, HP Inc. announced the commercial
Cybersecurity CoE in Pune for R&D availability of its award-winning Multi Jet Fusion

and Product Innovation

Incedo, a San Francisco Bay Area technology
services firm specializing in data manage-
ment, analytics, product engineering and
emerging technologies today announced
the launch of its Cyber Security Centre of
Excellence (CoE) in Pune, under a strategic
partnership with Tripwire, Inc., a leading
global provider of security and compliance
solutions for enterprises and industrial
organizations.
Tapping into Pune’s vast talent pool of
skilled IT and security professionals, Incedo
has initiated operations with a team of highly
skilled analysts, developers and researchers
on Tripwire’ssolutions and products. The
firm expects to continue to expand the team
to over 100 specialist engineers and experts
throughout 2018.
Anupam Wahi, Senior Vice President
& Head of Communication Engineering
at Incedo said,“Incedo is delighted to set
up its newest delivery centre in Pune. The
cyber security practiceat Incedo is set to
grow exponentially and we are committed
to investing heavily towards building our
engineering expertise to serve a rapidly
evolving, critical sector.”
“Incedo’s partnership with Tripwire is
a testament to our commitment towards
clients’ business needs. Our engineers in
Pune will work very closely with Tripwire
product specialists in Portland, Oregon thus
enhancing Tripwire’s R&D capabilities and
greatly accelerating their product develop-
ment velocity.” added Anupam Wahi.
3D Printing solution in India. HP also announced
Imaginarium and Adroitec as resellers of its 3D print-
ing solution in the country. HP’s Multi Jet Fusion 3D
Printing solution is a production-ready commercial
3D printing system that delivers superior-quality1
physical parts up to 10 times faster2 and at half the
cost3 of current 3D printing systems.
“We believe that digital transformation of manu-
facturing will be a key enabler of the next Industrial
Revolution,” said Sumeer Chandra, Managing
Director, HP India.
HP’s growing partner ecosystem enables businesses
to develop game-changing solutions that reinvent the
manufacturing industry. As a certified HP 3D print-
ing reseller partner, Imaginarium and Adroitec will
bring best-in-class expertise and knowledge of Multi
Jet Fusion technology to customers deploying the
solutions, as well as value added services such as the
enablement of new applications and industry-leading
response time and service.

Predictive Big Data platform Toovio forays into

Indian Market
Toovio which helps enterprises
to boost revenue, improve prof-
itability, and increase customer
engagement by taking action
based on real-time based
customer behavior insights,
today announced its entry and
direct presence in the fast-
growing India market. Toovio
is a SaaS-based marketing
solution provider focused on
enabling multi-channel offer
orchestration, built from the
most sophisticated decision-
ing framework and capable
of managing the complete
customer life cycle. Toovio
assists a range of industries
in driving profitable business
between the organization and
its customers.
Ashutosh Mehrotra,
Business Head at Toovio
Software said, “As businesses
head towards the modern age
of analytics, we are excited to
officially introduce ‘Toovio’ in
India. We envision teaching
machines to understand
people.

14 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018

 TRANSFORMATION OF THE CIOS AND
THE ROADOF
TRANSFORMATION AHEAD
THE CIOS AND
THE ROAD AHEAD

PRESENTS
PRESENTS

CIo
PRESENTS

CIo
DINE AND
DINE AND
DISCOURSE
DISCOURSE
2018
2018
POWERED BY
POWERED BY

LE MERIDIEN ITC WINDSOR | BANGALORE JW MARRIOT COURTYARD BY MARRIOT

| NEW DELHI | KOLKATA | AHMEDABAD
9th March,2018 16th March,2018 23rd March,2018 6th April,2018

HOTEL SAHARA STAR | MUMBAI ITC GRAND CHOLA | CHENNAI JW MARRIOT | PUNE
13th April,2018 20th April,2018 27th April,2018

500 CIOs from across India

Panel Discussions
Open Forums
AGENDA
06:00 pm: Registration
06:30 pm: Welcome Address and Keynote
07:00 pm: Panel Discussion
REGISTER FOR YOUR RESPECTIVE CITY AT
07:45 pm: Open Forum
08:30 pm: Dinner www.enterpriseitworld.com
ITWORLD // NEWS BRIEF
MANAGEMENT MANTRA
“The quality of a leader is reflected in the
standards they set for themselves.”
– RAY KROC, FOUNDER, MCDONALD’S CORPORATION
Open Source crucial to achieving
Digital India dream
The Open Source Initiative is celebrating its 20th
Anniversary in 2018 as the term was coined in a
session held on February 3rd, 1998 in Palo Alto,
California. In the last 20 years, the initiative has
come a long way. Acknowledging the importance
of ‘open source initiative’ which continues to play
in our lives and to enable open discussion on the
challenges that exist and to work out strategies
to iron them out, Bharat Exhibition organized
an ‘Open Source Summit 2018’ in New Delhi on
Number of pilot projects around
Machine Learning to double in 2018
DeloitteTouche Tohmatsu India’s eighth edition
of signature publication on TMT predicts major
advances in machine learning, VoLTE technology
services and Over the Top (OTT) platforms, apart
from other trends.
VoLTE is expected to be most prevalent voice
technology in the future. It is also estimated that
more than 90% of all mobile subscribers will
comprise of broadband subscribers by 2023.OTT
platforms are witnessing an explosion in original
content due to increase in consumption and
16 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018
February 08, 2018.
In India, we see Government
increasingly use ‘open source’ and it has
already started to disseminate more
information and offer more services
online these days. The Government
initiative of Digital India demands that
open source be used more widely not
just to save costs and time but also to
ensure implementation of some of the
ambitious plans effectively.
There is a need to connect new
websites and applications to older ones,
as well as across departments. To avoid
having to rewrite old software code to
function with new apps, Governments
are encouraging developers to use
software with built-in open standards.
viewership, the report says, adding that
they will gradually become a preferred
medium over television, with the
consumers of vernacular content likely
to become over 2.5 times that of English
language content by 2021.
As enterprises in India embrace
technology to bring transparency
and efficiency in business operations,
data assumes center stage in decision-
making, setting the stage for tools such
as advanced analytics and machine
learning to ushervalue-chain efficien-
cies, a Deloitte India spokesperson
said. Internet of Things, Realizing
thePotential
IoT-driven point solutions will be
adopted to solve a specific business
issue.
Robotic Process
Automation to
generate 2 lac jobs in
India by 2021
India is in prime position to become a Robotic
Process Automation (RPA) powerhouse
because of its growing talent pool and cost
advantage. It is estimated that around 2 lakh
RPA-led jobs will be created in the country
by 2021.
RPA has been gaining traction as a way of
automating repetitive, tedious tasks to handle
higher-value analysis and decision-making.
“India is reaping the benefits of a new genre
of jobs created from RPA. The Indian mind is
apt for this technology; Indians have the right
ability for workarounds and out-of-the-box
thinking that works well for RPA. So we see
a great pool of RPA talent emerging from
the country,” said Daniel Dines, CEO and
Co-Founder of UiPath, the leading enterprise
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software
company. He was speaking at the #UiPathFor-
ward, the RPA India summit hosted by UiPath
on Wednesday in Bengaluru.
The event saw participation from more
than 650 business leaders, experts and
executives and also discussed concepts
and presented work done by major UiPath
customers and partners such as HCL, KPMG,
IBM, Robert Bosch Engineering and many
more.
Sarah Burnett - Vice President of global
research company Everest Group, said that
automation is the way to go. “It will create
incredible opportunities in the IT sector.
In a recent study by Everest Group, 80% of
companies that we surveyed rated RPA to
meet expectations and even exceed them.
RPA addresses many areas including regula-
tory compliance, process automation and
more. Also it is secure and most importantly,
it is scalable.”

SMES NEED TO FIND THE RIGHT DIGITAL
PARTNER TO UNLOCK OPPORTUNITIES
Overcoming key challenges such as limited budgets and shortage of skilled
human resource to manage in-house technology can be overcome by
choosing cost-effective digital tool such as Managed Hosting Services.
T
oday, digital tools are no longer a
luxury, but a necessity. Toward this,
businesses across sectors in India
are digitizing to keep up with the
dynamic and competitive business
environment. The momentum
of digital transformation is picking up pace as
businesses are realizing the importance of early
digital adoption to help them reach critical mass
in shortest possible time and also gives them an
opportunity to expand their customer base not
only at home but also on global turf.
Given the increased accessibility and avail-
ability of digital tools, it is an ideal time for SMEs
to make the most of the ongoing digital revolu-
tion. Since SMEs contribute about 45% to India’s
GDP and employ a significant portion of the
country’s workforce, it makes immense business
sense for the sector to embrace digitization.
Deploying technology will not only hone their
business processes and output, but will also have a
significant impact on the economy.
Aspects such as substantial policy support,
infrastructure, and growth trends are driving
the transition toward digitization in many parts
of the country. Digital adoption is rationalized
by the fact that technologically agile companies
are empowered with several advantages than the
ones who fail to adopt it. Benefits of going digital
are many fold and include: streamlined business
processes and operations which lead to increased
productivity, enhanced customer experience,
better security, an effective workforce manage-
ment and reduced costs.
To achieve these business goals, the choice of
digital partner is critical as well. Tata Tele Business
Services has been a pioneer in enabling digital
transformation of multiple enterprises. Take for
an example, Shimla-based 31 Parallel BPO faced
connectivity problem which was a big hurdle in
seamless operation of the firm. To mitigate the
challenges faced by 31 Parallel, TTBS deployed
ILL for unhindered and dedicated internet
connectivity; PRI lines for voice service; Toll Free
Services; and VoIP services. The solutions offered
by TTBS have met all the IT requirements of 31
Parallel, and now the firm with better infrastruc-
tural IT support can even compete with bigger
BPO players and expand operations at national
level.
SME ADVICE
VISHAL BHAT,
REGIONAL OPERATIONS HEAD FOR NORTH &
EAST (SME), TATA TELE BUSINESS SERVICES
“Benefits of
going digital are
many fold and
include increased
productivity,
enhanced customer
experience, better
security, an effective
workforce management and
reduced costs.”
Despite an impressive growth trajectory and
positive rhetoric, the journey toward digitization
of SMEs is not devoid of barriers. Key challenges
such as limited budgets and a shortage of skilled
human resource to manage in-house technology
limits the adoption of advanced digital tools by
these companies. However, the solution is to
use a cost-effective digital tool such as Managed
Hosting Services, which provides a secure,
reliable and flexible hosting and storage environ-
ment, through cloud hosting services to support
business needs ensuring complete control and
security for critical business data and applica-
tions of the SMEs.
With digitization becoming a business norm,
ignoring technology could be a colossal error in
judgment. So, to make the most of the overabun-
dance of customized ICT solutions available
to them, SMEs need to put in all their faith in
a right “digital partner” with the best expertise
in the business. This will not only bring in top
notch services at their disposal, but will also help
them in overcoming challenges that hamper
tech adoption from the very start of their digital
journey.
FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 17
COVER STORY

18 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018


ENTERPRISE
DATA CENTER 3.0:
THE HYBRID IT ERA
Growing influence of Cloud, IoT and Mobility has pushed the
Indian Enterprise data center market to the second fastest
growing market in APAC and with managed services on the
rise, Indian CIOs expect their data center service providers to
be an asset in digital transformation journey and a partner in
achieving business objectives.
BY CHITRESH SEHGAL CSEHGAL@ACCENTINFOMEDIA.COM
E
nterprise India is fast expanding its
horizons in the digital era. Fast moving,
seamless and secure business processes
have become a competitive demand and
data has become the new differentiator.
Enterprise data grows exponentially every
day and it is but a necessity for the growth
and expansion plans for businesses. The ability to manage data
efficiently and make the most out of it is at the helm of the IT
vision today for Enterprise CIOs. This is where Data center
colocation services come in. They provide organizations with
conditioned space without requiring them to invest capital for
new construction. It also allows them to protect their data in
the case of emergency by acting as a disaster-recovery location.
Data has become the new gold and this has enabled India to
become the second fastest growing market in APAC. As per
Gartner, the data center market in India is expected to touch
US$4.5 billion mark by the end of 2018.
The IT model for organizations, which traditionally
consisted of captive on-premise data centers, is fast changing as
COVER STORY
outsourcing is gathering pace. Managed services are doing well
due to plus points like zero capital investment, high operational
efficiency and scalable infrastructure. 2017 witnessed a spur on
the adoption of the Cloud model among Indian enterprises.
Colocation is still dominant as security and compliance
continues to be the priority for highly regulated verticals such
as BFSI.
With enhanced focus on third platform technologies like
cloud, mobility and analytics has demanded a number of CIOs
to rethink their IT strategies, gradually inclining towards man-
aged service models due to the agility, flexibility and the scale
desired for new application workloads. As per another industry
study supports this growing trend, India will see managed
services eclipse colocation by the end of this year and will be
nearly three times more common than traditional colocation
by 2021. Key drivers for this huge increase are growth in data
and digital intelligent devices, growth of mobility and IoT
devices, digitalization and also the government’s Digital India
campaign.
FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 19
COVER STORY

WHAT CIOS LOOK FOR WHEN

THEY GO DATACENTER
HUNTING?
When it comes to Data Centers, some key criteria
rule the evaluations of CIOs. Uptime, Availability,
Redundancy, Security, Scalability and Disaster
Recovery are the standards ones to look at. This is
followed by Market reputation, compliance and
certifications and location needs. A good market
reputation with proven big client credentials
goes a long way in establishing a data center’s
credibility among the CIO community. Good
presence in the market and technical capabilities
are endorsed by happy customers who spread the
word among their fellow CIOs. HARISH SHARMA CL, AJAY YADAV,
In the Indian data center landscape today, GROUP VP – IT, TOYOTA FINANCIAL SERVICES HEAD IT(NORTH), ARSHIYA RAIL INFRASTRUCTURE
almost every data center is at least a Tier 3 or
above with each one of them boasting equable “CIOs should “When choosing
uninterrupted uptime, efficient infrastructure,
network services, connectivity, DR strategies, look at security a cloud provider,
Quality and Security certifications. This has expertise, self-owned involve business
shifted the focus of evaluations to the technical
qualities and promptness of support to provide infrastructure, leaders and not just
service excellence, IT to ensure your
flexibility and business objectives
adaptability when are communicated
identifying the right service and understood clearly by the
provider.” provider.”

leaders a seat at the table ensuring that the orga-

nization’s business objectives are communicated
clearly and ultimately understood by the service
provider.

WHAT’S ON-PREMISE AND

VISHWAJEET SINGH, WHAT’S ON CLOUD?
CIO, APTECH Businesses have today started understanding
the benefits of outsourcing their IT services.
“When selecting However with perceived compliance, security and

data center service most importantly privacy issues, deciding which

workloads stay on-premise and which are moved
providers, the most to cloud is a issue that the CIO has to deal with all

important thing is LOKESH VISHNOI,

market reputation, everything
else will follow.”
managed services, the tools used, track record
of delivering as per commitment, pricing and
most critically service provider understanding of
Business objectives of the CIO. Service providers
should be able to optimize resources and cost as
per the business needs for which the CIO needs
their services. The idea of the Indian CIO with his
IT strategy is to give his fellow enterprise business
by himself. Moving to the Cloud helps business
cater with peak consumption needs of workloads
GM, CRCL
with no impact on the availability and loss of
“Crucial criteria time. Workloads which have most fluctuating
consumption of resources are most likely to be
when selecting data selected for migration. Workloads which require
center services infrastructure beyond the capacity of in house
DC as Cloud offers scalability on demand which
is experience in is critical to some of the new age applications
problem solving with growing mobility and connectivity speeds.
Typical criteria which CIOs observe when
and technical troubleshooting evaluating applications for outsourcing are load
factor, uptime requirements, TCO, Regulatory
capabilities.”
compliance, Flexible MSAs and SLAs, Network

20 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018


DIPAK ROUT,
HEAD-IT, ARIHANT CAPITAL MARKETS
“Evaluating potential
providers on the
basis of location,
amenities, network
services, security
and pricing, ensures
investment in data center colocation
yields the greatest benefits.”
carrier redundancy, High-density environments,
DR and last but not the least, business critical-
ity. Businesses generally decide the strategy to
move the application or infrastructure on to the
cloud on the basis of how critical the workloads
are starting with the least critical applications
and tertiary systems followed by ones which
have users access from outside the organization
beside internal users or need access to users from
multiple geographic locations.
Cloud migrations are relatively easy for almost
all kinds of web-based solutions, unless there is
a compliance requirement to not host them on
public cloud. Standalone applications that run in
isolation are also far easier to move than heavily
integrated and complex systems. Newer applica-
tions that run on the latest OS are far less likely to
run into compatibility problems. However migra-
tions run into compatibility problems with legacy
applications which are not web-based and require
significant amount of data transfer. This has
given rise to the trend of virtualized on-premises
environments in the CIO community which
makes migrations significantly easier.
The honor of being the first applications to
be moved to the Cloud is given generally to
non-core apps like Email Servers, HRMS, POS,
Website Portals, DR, CRM, Communication
COVER STORY
MILAN KUMAR, ANAND RUHELA,
GLOBAL CIO, WABCO HEAD – IT, KWALITY
“Businesses should “We decide the
execute pilots and strategy to move
only move workloads to the cloud on the
and servers based on scale of business
successful test cases.” criticality of the application or
infrastructure in question.”
and Collaborations solutions and In-house web
application which are accessed off-premise. With
the growth in eCommerce channels, applications
catering to online services need to be on Cloud
with availability and peak workload management
being at the heart of these applications. ERP
applications, Corporate Databases, File Servers
and Active Directories are however workloads
that need a little more consideration and are
moved to the Cloud or kept on-premise owing
to the compliance and business requirements of
organizations.
However, it is noteworthy that CIOs have been
able to warm their board rooms and realized the
RAJEEV KHADE, advantages or Cloud and overcome the perceived
MANAGER – ASIA PLANT IT INFRASTRUCTURE, skepticism around security and compliance. Busi-
ADIENT ness critical applications need to move to cloud as
“High availability and it guarantees better availability, uptime, scal-
critical applications ability and TCO. Overall migrations of business
applications to cloud is the next step in the plans
with access to of a number of Indian CIOs with many already
users from multiple evaluating moving entire workloads to the cloud.
geographic locations are MANAGING DATA SECURITY
AND COMPLIANCE ISSUES
well suited for migration to the
Threat to enterprise data can occur from virtually
Cloud” anywhere today. Top security concerns with
outsourcing include DDoS Attacks, Shared
Cloud Computing Services, Data Loss through
unforeseen natural disasters and Inadequate
Data Backups, Phishing and Social Engineer-
FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 21
COVER STORY
ing Attacks, System Vulnerabilities and lastly
Employee Negligence. Cloud security needs
effective cloud data protection strategy to protect
data from loss as well as against any cyber security
threats. CIOs want this assurance of complete
data security from their service provider, allowing
businesses to leverage the power of the cloud
without the associated risk.
When it comes to how much the Indian
CIOs trust their Datacenter service provider’s
security prowess, the answer is a mixed bag. Data
center service providers realize the importance
of protecting their customer data for both the
customer’s and their business continuity. Most
of the Data center service providers have strong
standards in terms of physical and network secu-
SOURABH TIWARI,
CIO, OVERSEAS INFRASTRUCTURE ALLIANCE
“Apart from the
service provider’s
security capabilities,
we ensure data
security with
firewall, anti-virus system and
security layer 3/4 protocol.”
rity and have built up their capabilities, compli-
ances and certifications with global standards and
practices like ISMS ISO/IEC 27001 etc.
Although a thorough check and evaluation of
the Data center service provider is a vital step in
the CIO selection process, actively participation at
the internal IT level is important. Businesses need
to evaluate the security issues with their service
providers. A number of enterprise CIOs are a
little skeptical about Data center service providers’
security frameworks, as on CIO points out that
most do not have the required skill set at ground
level. They do have counted experts but they uti-
22 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018
lize them in sales rather than in implementation
and services. The in-house security for most CIOs
is limited to Security firewalls, Anti-virus systems,
and Security layer protocols. Some enterprise
CIOs though have built up effective in-house
information security teams they can depend on to
handle all security issues related to Data center.
DATA CENTER TECHNOLOGY
TRENDS FOR 2018
End to end managed services are rapidly gaining
inroads across enterprises verticals and is
expected to be the biggest trend in 2018. Apart
from the few core verticals and organizations
that will retain colocation, all Data center JYOTI CHOPRA,
providers are expected to be merely providing DIRECTOR – IT, GLAZE TRADING INDIA
managed services with Cloud hosting services
from Hyperscalers like Amazon and Google also “Data center in the
being embraced big time. Cloud based services
have dramatically decrease the pricing aspect of
coming time will
hosting. Other trends that are set for enterprise go through major
adoption are Hybrid IT Models, Converged and
Hyper-converged Infrastructure (CI and HCI)
revamp as increasing
and Application based hosting. Other notable number of services
trends will be Software defined and green energy
data centers.
and digital audience will
From the CIO point of view, the focus is leave us with no choice other than to
Cybersecurity. They expect a strong service model migrate to Cloud.”
with in-depth understanding of business security
SUNIL KUMAR, GYAN PRAKASH,
CTO, MYND SOLUTIONS DGM OPERATIONS, HOFINCONS INFOTECH &
INDUSTRIAL SERVICES
“In a few years, apart “The new age will
from colocation be full on DC traffic,
all Data center as lower tariff plans
providers are emerge and with
expected to be increase in internet
merely providing managed bandwidth not just
services with Cloud hosting being
enterprises but all types of users
managed by few global giants.”
will migrate.”

implications. Data Security will continue to be
the biggest IT trend and challenge and they want
Data center service providers to focus on this
aspect. The Enterprise data center landscape is
set for major transformation in the coming time.
Increasing number of services and digital audi-
ence will necessitate entire migrations to Cloud.
Security issues and concerns will still remain a
big question, with skepticism in boardrooms. But
cloud based hosting is the future, a fact not up
for debate and such concerns are expected to be
addressed with time.
HOW DATA CENTER SERVICE
PROVIDERS CAN BE AN ASSET
TO CIOS?
From the CIO point of view, the Data center is the
place where his organization’s entire information
including vital resources, email and communica-
tion, key applications, and company databases
reside. The Data center service provider has to be
the prime asset for Enterprises. The Indian CIOs
expect better management enabling hassle-free
business operation, increase compliance and
reliability, and increasing focus on value addition
through services like reporting and securing busi-
ness confidential data. They should work hand in
hand with the CIO to find the right cost model,
be transparent and prompt in their services and
support.
PARVEEN KUMAR SHARMA,
CTO, ICAI
“Data center
service providers
should guide their
customers for right
sizing and services
during migration from
on-premise to cloud.”
SHAILENDRA CHOUDHARY,
VP AND HEAD-IT, INTERARCH BUILDING
PRODUCTS
“Data center service
providers should
make themselves
relevant to their
customers ensuring
reliability levels required by
organizations to meet their
business goals and objectives.”
Apart from focusing on keeping their customer
data secure and always available minimum
downtime, data center service providers need to
act as growth partners for CIOs. They need to be
digital ready themselves to power digital transfor-
mations for their customers. Data center service
providers play a crucial role in their customer’s
digital journey. They need to sit down with the
CIO and provide guidance for right sizing and
services during migration from on premise to
cloud. This includes not only exploring all pos-
sible options during the migration planning and
process but also helping customers in optimizing
cost by offering the best possible solution as per
the specific business needs. Data center service
providers should prioritize helping CIOs meet
their business goals and objectives, only then will
they come across as true assets through the digital
transformation journeys of their customers.
THE RIGHT HYBRID IT
STRATEGY
Adopting a Hybrid IT model is not a piece of
cake. Building, controlling and sustaining an
effective hybrid IT model while meeting business
demands and end-user expectations is a mam-
moth task. Latency and interoperability are issues
which plague hybrid IT if the infrastructure is
COVER STORY
not built properly from the onset and applica-
tions don’t seamlessly integrate across the hybrid
solution. Making the move to a hybrid model
demands a few key considerations from the CIO
and a careful approach. The sheer combination of
on-premise, hosted and cloud services, IoT and
bimodal IT by their very nature create an intricate
mix of legacy systems and new IT which can
hamper ease of operations if not implemented
and managed effectively.
The idea is to use the best of both models, and
keep business demands at the very core of these
decisions. CIOs need to ensure that the business
goals are met and integrate new approaches only
where need and maintenance of legacy systems
is no longer required. Adoption of a Hybrid IT
strategy is tantamount to envisioning new digital
business architecture. The CIO should carefully
study his existing infrastructure and in-house
skill-set in terms of demands from future
expansion plans. IT teams should execute pilots
and only move workloads based on successful
test cases. Migrations should be backed by
effective network and security infrastructure
management and 24x7 monitoring services. Even
after successful migrations, CIOs should plan
on continuous assessment of the operations and
further alignment of the IT model to organiza-
tional business goals. In short, the mantra is to go
RAVINDER ARORA,
HEAD – INFORMATION SECURITY, IRIS SOFTWARE
“Building, controlling
and sustaining an
effective hybrid IT
estate, while meeting
business demands
and end-user expectations is
a herculean task.”
FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 23
COVER STORY

slow and steady, evaluate well, strike the balance IT strategy moving forward. The future of your
between value and control, then decide the right business depends on it.

TOP CIO DATACENTER

SELECTION CRITERIA
DEEPAK KALAMBKAR, Security
IT HEAD AND CISO, MARVEL DATA SERVICES

“The adoption of a Services Excellende

Hybrid IT strategy Technical Support

is tantamount to
envisioning new digital Availability

business architecture.” Infrastructure

Location

Pricing

Network Services

Amenities Percentage Of CIOs

Prioritizing The Criteria

Market Reputation

Redundancy

SRINIVASA RAO Flexibility

MUPPANNENI,
GROUP CIO, ANDHRA PRADESH AND TELANGANA 0 20 40 60 80 100
COOPERATIVE BANKS

“The right IT Strategy

needs continuous Priority selection criteria for Indian CIOs when
assessment of evaluating Data Center Service Providers
current operations
and alignment to *Observed from responses from 200 CIOs and IT Leaders from different enterprise verticals
across India.
business goals of the organization.”

24 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018

 TECH TALK

SOURABH TIWARI,
CIO, OVERSEAS INFRASTRUCTURE ALLIANCE
INDIA

“With the growing

vitality of their role,
CIOs need a clear
vision which aims towards
hyper productivity, availability and
engagement.”

infrastructure leaner, more flexible, and better

OVERCOMING THE CHALLENGES

equipped to adapt in unpredictable markets. The
approach should be towards simply getting the
plan to work deliverables rather than just ROI and

OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TCO focused parameters.

The surge in Hybrid Cloud landscape has a
significant influence on digital transformation
Digitization is playing a vital role across all business sectors today as entire plans for organizations across business. CIOs
organisational structures and entire frameworks are being redesigned should now seek business value additives in
starting from employees and vendors to business partners and customers. combining on-premise and cloud solution.
The hybrid strategy offers innovative end-user

W
ith the spread of digital
technologies across stake-
holders; CIOs, CDOs and
CTOs now have to deal
with the added pressure
of regulating the flow of
information and formulizing digital readiness
inside out in the organization.
The first challenge in the digital journey is the
consolidation of all the business components
and uniting them on a Digital platform. Such
a platform suits to offer a seamless customer
experience and transitioning to up-to-date digital
integrations. Another challenge in the initial
planning phase is budget constraints, with alloca-
tion of funds being perpetual headaches. CFOs
demand defined objectives right from the start
which is a tough ask at this stage from the CIO.
As the journey goes from the planning stages to
initial phase of execution, challenges arising from
capturing large amount of data from multi-
channels like social, transactional, analytical and
GPS, records and growing sources with multi-
tools like mobility and IoT form the next issue.
This has another challenge which comes hand
in hand in the face of data security acceleration,
process and policy acceleration and prevention of
multi-secure attacks. Another universal challenge
is handling system Integration and middleware
solution, with lack of effective and mobilized
system for digital integration creates issues with is
a prerequisite costly if ignored.
All along the Digital Transformation journey,
the CIO should look to partner with special-
ized leaders, intermediaries and companies
to reshape processes, policies for building
employee-employer relationships and approach-
ing and scouting required talents. Digitization
needs a revamp of overall digital infrastructure.
CIOs should always look for ways to make their
features, faster provisioning, and moving on from
the storage and scalability problems of legacy IT.
Constantly upgrading the infrastructure through
latest hardware and software refreshment enables
CIOs to match steps with industry peers and
competition. New age digital trends like product-
as-a-service; active creation, service everywhere,
personalization, community collaboration,
open ecosystem and value chain disintegra-
tion should be tested for business benefits and
continuous infrastructure improvement. Also
worth mentioning is the blockchain revolution.
The revolutionary technology has the potential
to disrupt and transform the world of money,
business and society as application and use-cases
surge to new heights every day.
To conclude with, CIOs, with the growing
vitality of their role need a clear vision which
aims towards hyper productivity, availability and
engagement. Only then can they truly reap the
benefits of the Digital Transformation journey for
their organizations.

FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 25

FIRST COVERAGE

INDIA’S SILICON VALLEY TO GET ONE

OF THE WORLD’S BIGGEST TIER 4
DATA CENTERS
CtrlS launches one of the world’s biggest Tier4 Data centers in Bengaluru promises redefined experience and
100% uptime for mission critical businesses such as banking, insurance, telecom, internet and enterprises

26 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018

 FIRST COVERAGE

SRIDHAR PINAPUREDDY
FOUNDER AND CEO, CTRLS DATACENTERS

“We are investing

approximately Rs. 500
Cr. in our world class
facility – which also is
the World’s 1st LEED
Platinum Certified
building with industry
best PUE enabled by
a Carrier-Neutral platform and
highest uptime SLA of 99.995%.”

D
ata loss is a crucial nemesis for
businesses today. In a recent
study, it was observed that
when a disaster strikes, 43% of
business experiencing it shut
their operations soon. Those
who do survive the immedi-
ate aftermath, usually end up closing within 2
years. More importantly, 93% of businesses that
experienced disruption in their datacenter for
approximately 10 days went bankrupt within one
year. Clearly, data availability and management
are crucial not just for the smooth functioning of
an organization, but also its very survival.
Catering to this vital need of secure and
guaranteed data availability and management,
market leader CtrlS Datacenters is launching first
Tier-4 Data center in India’s IT hub Bengaluru.
Assessed as one of the largest Tier-4 data centers
in South India, the facility is expected to provide
India’s growing tech giants with reliable, robust
data management and distribution networks,
with near zero downtime, 100% redundancy and
industry’s lowest PUE.
A reputed global name in the Industry, CtrlS
Data centers powers 15 of the Fortune 500 Global
Multinationals, 25 of the ET 500 companies
in India including major banks, insurance compa-
nies, telecom players, ecommerce, healthcare,
manufacturing, retail, and logistics. Some of CtrlS
Data centers major Global and Indian customers
include SAP, Deloitte, BMW, Ranbaxy, FedEx,
State Bank of India, Panasonic across USA,
Singapore, Middle East, and India. The company
boasts of Asia’s largest Tier-4 Datacenter and is
India’s only Tier 4 certified data center and man-
aged services provider.
The new Tier-4 facility in Bengaluru besides
being carrier-neutral, boasts of largest peering
and IP-transit arrangement including 170 CDN
PoPs across 35 countries with 18 Domestic PoPs
across India. The company has a large concentra-
tion of edge servers, at key locations with high
internet traffic. With intelligent storage load
balancing, caching /routing, and high computing
and caching power at each PoP, CtrlS promises a
high QoS leading to High Quality of Experience
(QoE). With its robust network ecosystem, with
multiple datacenters, internet connectivity, and
own infrastructure including dark-fiber assets,
peering, and private internet exchange, CtrlS
provides low latency combined with 99.995%
uptime guarantee.
As per CtrlS, a total investment plan of Rs. 500
Crore will see the Bangalore data center facility
offer rich employment potential for the state of
Karnataka with plans to hire over 200 engineering
and science graduates in the times to come.
Minister for IT, BT, and S&T, Government of
Karnataka Priyank Kharge, who will be present at
the launch of the new CtrlS datacenter, shared his
thoughts “I’m happy that CtrlS is establishing its
latest datacenter in Bengaluru – The Silicon Valley
of India. Our city, which is already the leader in
software services, is also fast becoming a hub for
global organizations and I’m sure the CtrlS data
center will be the start of an ecosystem.”
CtlrS Data centers Founder and CEO Sridhar
Pinapureddy shed light on his vision with the
launch of the new facility, “We are delighted to
announce the launch of Bangalore’s 1st Tier-4
Datacenter. Our Tier-4 datacenters are equipped
to power mission critical applications requiring
near zero downtime and low latency. We are
investing approximately Rs. 500 Cr. in our world
class facility – which also is the World’s 1st LEED
Platinum Certified building with industry best
PUE enabled by a Carrier-Neutral platform and
highest uptime SLA of 99.995%.”
With the new launch, CtrlS now counts five
datacenters in India in its ranks which include
four Tier-4 Data centers spread across Hyder-
abad, Mumbai, Noida and Bengaluru and one
Tier-3 Data center located in Chennai. Ctrls’ total
datacenter footprint across the country spans
over half-a-million square feet with rack capacity
exceeding 10,000. The new Tier4 facility not only
adds to the growing reputation of CtrlS Datacen-
tres but also makes it an obvious choice for India’s
internet and banking giants.

FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 27

INTERVIEW // SYNOLOGY

MIKE CHEN,
MARKETING DIRECTOR, SYNOLOGY

“When it comes to
value for businesses,
there are three clear
benefits of NAS:
Affordability, Flexibility, and Security.”

28 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018


APPLYING SOFTWARE-DEFINED
APPROACH TO STORAGE
Data explosion has virtually changed the way traditional storage works, paving the way for the more NAS companies like Synology
to make inroads into tapping the growing storage needs of the Indian SME market.
How has data explosion impacted
the traditional storage market?
With the rise of deep learning and AI, it is not
just people but machines too are now generating
data. Big Data as a trend is just up and coming,
and its proliferation will virtually change the way
traditional storage works. With vast quantities
of data at their disposal, businesses need an
outlet to study and evaluate it towards procuring
useful information. Synology NAS is part of
this up and coming trend wherein we offer huge
data storage capacity, and algorithms such as
deep learning and subject recognition to get the
information our customers need once we have
the data. Our most unique selling point is our
software, DSM or the Disk Station Manager.
We even have our own public cloud. This gives
you the leverage to use Synology NAS on your
private cloud and back it up on Synology Cloud
as a complete hybrid solution.
We are integrating more such features in our
surveillance portfolio. The data is exploding and
to keep up with it, you need the right algorithms
to collect and evaluate the data. With all this data
coming in, you have to have the right filters to
enhance the customer experience.
What benefits can businesses look
forward to with NAS devices?
When it comes to value for businesses, there
are three clear benefits of NAS: Affordability,
Flexibility, and Security. With Synology, you can
build your storage as you go. If you’re a startup,
you don’t need to exhaust your entire storage
budget at once. Another affordability factor
of Synology NAS is everything comes inside a
onetime cost. You don’t need to subscribe for
additional licenses for different applications. We
have a packaged service with more than thirty
applications. We have in-house designing capa-
bilities and also welcome third party developers.
Over 90 percent of our applications are free.
Next big benefit is flexibility. Enterprise
Management Information Systems are perpetu-
ally wary of new hardware and software coming
into the network infrastructure. Synology’s
offerings are business infrastructure ready
with the ability to speak to multiple protocols,
work with multiple servers and communicate
with all operating systems including Windows,
Linux etc. When you bring Synology into your
company, we don’t want to replace your storage
infrastructure rather add to it. With this added
value, businesses can explore new applications.
Thirdly, when you do backups, you are
protected from threats like ransomware. That
is where our last value lies, in security. Studies
have shown that the cyber war is just getting
started. Ransomware threats will continue
and enterprises and individuals will forever be
vulnerable to attacks. Synology offers full data
protection with backup features that help you
take snapshots every minute and recover data
in minutes so that you can minimize downtime
from any such damage. This is the value that
Synology brings to businesses and enterprises.
What is your strategy and
roadmap for India market in
2018?
Synology is focused on strengthening its pres-
SYNOLOGY // INTERVIEW
ence in India. Although our India numbers are
relatively small, but that is exactly what drives us.
If you look at how we have performed in similar
global markets like China, where we started 6
years ago is now among the top five markets for
us globally. India being alike in terms of the scale
and current growth rate, we expect same results
in our endeavors here. We aim to break the USD
10million revenue mark in India in the next five
years.
Customer-wise, the focus will be on targeting
the SME segment. We have the right market
strategy in place and the right partners to
develop the pre and post sales infrastructure
across not just Tier 1, but Tier 2 cities as well. We
have frequent road shows and training programs
planned. A big focus will be on creating success-
ful customer case studies. We are here for the
long run and in due time, with the right set of
partners, market share, channels and team, we
will set up a stronger infrastructure in India for
both sales and technical support.
What is your message to prospec-
tive enterprise customers?
Synology is a software defined company with
a radical mindset integrating breakthrough
technologies and trends such as all flash array,
deep learning, AI and hyper convergence in
our offerings. The strength Synology lies in
our software defined mindset for innovation
which enables us to give our customers the best
possible storage experience. We want to offer our
customers that sense of ease and security. If you
use Synology, you sleep peacefully at night. Rest
assured, your data is protected.
FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 29
SECURITY INSIGHT

EMERGING NEED FOR DATA SECURITY IN

DATACENTER ENVIRONMENTS
2017 has been a year of data breaches and ransomware attacks as global tragedies ‘WannaCry’, ‘Petya’,
‘Equifax’, ‘CloudBleed’, ‘Bad Rabbit’ etc. forced enterprises worldwide to relook at their security programs.

S
ince data centers are repositories
for most of the business/cus-
tomer data, data security controls
and most importantly securing
the Data Centre becomes of
utmost importance.
IMPLEMENTING
COUNTERMEASURES
The first thing to do before implementing any
countermeasures is to Conduct Risk Assess-
ment of Data Center. This includes assessing the
complete threat landscape and existing controls,
including, but not limited to physical security,
access control, business continuity planning,
compliances, server security etc. This will help
in gaining a clear measure of the inherent risk
and security posture within the data center and
help in deciding upon the right controls to be

30 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018


MEETALI SHARMA
RISK, COMPLIANCE & SECURITY LEADER,
SDG SOFTWARE
“In order to protect
customer’s critical
information and data
assets, focus should
be on implementing
preventive, detective as
well as corrective controls and early
threat detection mechanisms.”
implemented. Similar to the risk assessment of
data center, due diligence should be done while
selecting the vendor for Data Center, wherever
the services are outsourced either on premises or
on cloud.
Based on results of risk assessment, counter-
measures/controls can be implemented -
1) Physical Security
l Have a secure physical location – Ensure that
the location of data center is some distance from
other offices or headquarters affiliated with it. The
location should be a non-seismic zone which is
not prone to earthquakes.
l Surveillance cameras - Surveillance plays a
vital role for monitoring daily operations of a data
center.
l Fire resistant walls& Fire safety equipment –
This will ensure that the facility is protected from
high-risk man-made and natural disasters like
fire.
l Install Intrusion alarm systems - Intru-
sion alarm system would send out alerts to the
authorized personnel whenever the security of the
data center is compromised
l Temperature and humidity monitor-
ing–Ensures that the server and other hardware
components are protected against fluctuating
weather conditions.
l Continuous Power Supply and backup –
Batteries can be in place to automatically supply
electricityin case of emergency and diesel genera-
tors/UPS can be in place which can supply power
supply to data center for prolonged period.
l Preventive maintenance checks – Regular
preventive maintenance should be done. This
should be well planned and monitored through-
out the year as planned.
2) Access Control
l Secure access to authorized personnel - Access
control plays a significant role in data center
security. Access to data center should be given to
authorized personnel and must be role based.
l Two-factor authentication – This is being
used widely now-a-days to ensure enhanced
access control. It is generally a combination of
passcode and access based ID card/biometric
authentication.
l Remove default accounts - This should be
done to ensure credentials are not compromised
and misused.
l Isolate from parent network where required
– wherever possible, layered defense should be
used. In cases where the data center is within the
premises, separate VLANs should be there and
servers should be isolated from parent network
unless critical.
3) Server Security
l Monitor connections to server – Server
connections should be virtual and monitored at
all times to prevent any unauthorized access.
l Logs inspection – All logs (access, system
etc) should be monitored to detect any suspected
activities.
l Establish protective technologies –some of
them include malware protection, host intrusion
prevention, intrusion detection & prevention
systems and data loss prevention
l Malware protection – Ensure regular protec-
tion by Anti-virus updation, patches installation,
vulnerability assessment at planned intervals.
4) Hardware
l Have backup hardware – Backup hardware
should be available at all times which can be
used in case of failure of primary hardware.
Redundancy can be practiced which increases
security by providing an extra layer of equipment,
personnel, or storage in the event of the primary
source’s failure
l Secure storage of backup tapes – Backup tapes
must be stored in an encrypted form with proper
access control.
l Separate web server and data server wherever
possible to prevent complete loss of business data
in case of hardware failure or external/internal
hacking.
5) Business Continuity Planning / Disaster
Recovery (BCP/DR)
l Have a second datacenter – Just as having a
backup hardware or backup tapes may sound
like a good idea, enterprises that are dealing with
SECURITY INSIGHT
sensitive/confidential information may also plan
for a second data center as part of their business
continuity planning to prevent any data loss
l Conduct backup restoration drills – Not
only does the backup need to be secured and
encrypted, restoration drills need to be conducted
at frequent pre-defined intervals to ensure the
data is reusable and can be restored easily
6) Insider Threat
Since it is evident from various reports and
surveys that most of the data breaches happen
due to insider threats, following measures must
be in place to ensure protection against insider
threats :
l Regular training of personnel
l Monitoring of activities
l Conduct background checks
l Define and test Incident Management Process
7) Regulatory Compliance
Although this is not mandatory, however, in
today’s era, with the emerging threats, comply-
ing and getting certified in few industry best
standards like ISO 27001, ISO 22301, PCI-DSS
etc. gives an assurance to the customers that their
data is well protected.
8) Data Security
Whether the data center is located on premises
or on cloud, data security is the most critical
aspect to be taken into account. Any data and
backup files stored ot transmitted with customers
or internally must be in an encrypted format or
transmitted via secure fiber-optic cables. Backup
tapes should also be encrypted and as a best
practice incremental as well as complete backups
should be taken on defined frequency. Data
backups can also be stored at a second location
to minimize data loss, however, all data must be
access controlled, secured and monitored at all
times.
IN A NUTSHELL,
The primary objective of implementing data
center security controls is to ensure that all
foreseeable measures are taken to protect
customer’scritical/sensitive information and
data assets. Focus should be on implementing
preventive, detective as well as corrective controls
and early threat detection mechanisms. All key
aspects related to data center security must be
addressed at the beginning during the strategic
planning phase and results of risk assessment
must form the basis of selecting the appropriate
countermeasures. Regular risk assessments and
controls optimization should be made an integral
part of the security framework to strengthen
resilience against emerging threats.
FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 31
DIGITAL DIARY

MAKING ‘THINK DIGITAL’ PART

OF EMPLOYEE DNA
Shifting focus on getting the machines and humans to work together, continually coexisting and co-creating,
businesses will start bringing changes to where they invest, who they attract, what they patent and how they
develop competencies that outperform competitors.

O
rganizations worldwide are new
in their digital transformation
journey. They are either in the
process of creating or have
just created the role of a Chief
Digital Officer (CDO). Most
of them are doing their digital
transformation internally to improve the overall
productivity of different business processes, for
asset optimization, creating new age experiences
for the customers, employees, others and so on.
There is massive innovation happening in
the marketplace with lots of new technologies
emerging and becoming mainstream, such as the
Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence
(AI), big data analytics, machine learning, dif-
ferent user experience technologies, Blockchain,
etc., enabling enterprises to get a competitive
advantage. While doing so, their emphasis at the
outset should also be on creating a ‘Think Digital’
culture in the organization.
WHAT IS ‘THINK DIGITAL’
CULTURE?
Organizations are typically perceived from two
perspectives – individual and organizational–
basis visible and invisible factors. From an
individual’s perspective, the visible component is
the skill and from an organizational perspective,
it is the structure, policies, processes, systems, and
infrastructure. The invisible factor is the mindset
of the organization. The collective mindset of any
organization is its culture and an organizational

32 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018


MANDAR MARULKAR
CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, KPIT TECHNOLOGIES
“A ‘Think Digital’ culture is
when every employee of a
company understands the
meaning of going digital,
starts thinking on how to
move towards it, and finds ways to
incorporate digital in everything they do.”
culture is not that easily measurable. security, DevOps add value to and are a must-
A ‘Think Digital’ culture, as the name suggests have for organizations.
is when every employee of a company under- Data-mining skills are the most important
stands the meaning of going digital, starts think- of the three and essential for every individual,
ing on how to move towards it, and finds ways to irrespective of their designations or job roles. In
incorporate digital in everything they do. the past, companies depended on the analytical
Employees of any IT firm have a basic under- abilities of their employees to come up with
standing that technology helps solve problems. insights based on the data collected in past
But, not everyone will be tech savvy. Those, part reports, and take a right decision. The technology
of the enabling functions may not understand the was there, but there was no democratization of
need for the company to move towards digital. the intelligence. But now, if everybody is trained
It is important to make them understand the in analytical skills then it helps increase the
power of digital technologies by giving examples in-the-moment effectiveness of employees as they
from their day-to-day lives. It will simplify their will take the right decisions at the right time. The
understanding of the digital technologies and analytics should support the decision-making
make it easier for companies to implement similar ability of an employee to come up with quick and
ideas internally to improve productivity and drive worthwhile insights.
cultural changes in the organisation. The availability of skills coupled with a deep
It is important to train employees so that understanding of the company’s key verticals and
they have the necessary skills to think and act pain points of its customers will help to evaluate
digitally. While employees will be well-versed the company’s capability in digital technologies.
in the traditional skills, with the world moving
towards digital, the real requirement is to re-skill BENEFITS OF THINK DIGITAL
employees in emerging technologies to avoid CULTURE
massive layoffs. A ‘Think Digital’ culture requires Digital Transformation is relevant for every
three types of skills – domain understanding, industry irrespective of the domain, be it
technical expertise and data mining ability. manufacturing, retail, telecom, oil and gas, etc.
Employees need to have a deep domain It is horizontal and based on the culture of the
understanding, creativity, passion and curiosity. organisation, the priorities of the leadership and
They need to know the business constraints and the maturity of digitisation within the enterprise.
the relevance of what is happening in their project There is a difference between digitisation and
and in the customer domain. They require good digital transformation. Many organisations have
storytelling ability and analytical guidance and embarked on the journey of digitisation by auto-
leadership. Employees with technical skills such mating tasks and augmenting business processes
as new-age technology coding, platform-based using digital technologies. Some organisations
development, agile application developments, have also started digitizing their OT infrastruc-
cloud-native application development, cyber ture by adding sensors. For a long time, OT wasn’t
DIGITAL DIARY
exposed to the internet or integrated with the IT
infrastructure. By adding sensors and collecting
real-time data, organisations can come out with
new ways for improving operational efficiencies,
increasing safety and predictability, along with
new data-driven business models. They have the
early-mover advantage, and can, therefore, grow
much faster than the others. If any company hasn’t
started the process then it is wise to start soon or
else be left far behind their competition.
Companies in the digital age need to under-
stand the power of digital technologies such as
bots using conversational user-interfaces, aug-
mented and virtual reality (AR & VR), cognitive
technologies such as computer vision, artificial
intelligence, and machine learning, etc. Consider-
ing the industry segment and maturity of the
existing processes, companies can choose these
technologies to automate some of the manual
work currently done by their employees. This
will make processes intelligent and create a better
experience while improving business productiv-
ity. The time spent on rudimentary work will be
spent on adding more value to end customers.
Once we start focusing on getting the machines
and humans to work together, continually
coexisting and co-creating, we will start bringing
changes to where we invest, whom we attract,
what we patent and how we develop competen-
cies that outperform competitors. We will see
more task automation, process augmentation
and job amplification using digital technologies.
For transforming companies in the digital age,
they need to build a team composed of dream-
ers, designers, doubters, and doers. Collectively
represent different viewpoints but share the
same vision. The dreamer’s crazy ideas need
the designer’s discipline to translate them into
different experiments, the doubter’s validation
on whether the ideas are worth the investment
and commercially viable, and the doer’s skills to
build the structures, processes, and ecosystem for
implementing the ideas at scale.
Major impediment to adopting digital is the
organisational culture. Other barriers include the
top management commitment, board commit-
ment, skills and talent perspective, unavailability
of the resources, etc. If we get the right culture in
the organisation – Think Digital culture – then
instinctively there will be lot of push from
everybody in the organisation to make it happen
in the other areas as well.
Businesses can never come to the end of its
digital journey as it is an ongoing process with
substantial progress happening. There will be
a constant need for building digital leadership,
technical skills and educating people on the
things that can be automated, augmented and
amplified.
FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 33
CIO TALK

TRANSFORMATION OF THE ENTERPRISE CIO

The opportunity and challenge for the CIO today is all about agility. The CIO is necessitated to don many hats
– Operator, Technologist, Strategist and Catalyst – in order to drive values in a way which business-oriented
colleagues can understand.

T
he Chief Information Officer
(CIO) is one that is normally
associated with the responsibility
of the various Information Tech-
nology and Computer systems
that support the organization’s
goals and objectives. In today’s
rapidly changing world, this seems to be more of
a theoretical description of the role shouldered by
the individual. Over the last 10 years, this role has
been influenced strongly by technological winds
of change leading to a strong metamorphosis in
the expectations of the role than ever before. Most
CIOs have been fortunate to witness the digital
revolution, presenting them with a plethora of
opportunities that we could not think of earlier. It
has also helped organizations to equip themselves
with more capabilities to explore new territories
in niche areas. New business models have been
introduced to optimize the use of technology
in a better way and strategize business goals.
Consequently, the CIO role is no longer confined
to keeping abreast with new technological
advancements but also lead changes in his/her
organization.
With the advent of highly disruptive technolo-
gies in the recent past – Social media, Mobile

34 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018

 CIO TALK

MILAN KUMAR still valid today, but it is largely defined today by

GLOBAL CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, WABCO variable factors like technological innovations,
a highly demanding business environment,
ever-changing regulations and an optimum
utilization of technology to meet business
“Today, the CIO has goals. The CIO’s challenge today is to perfectly

to interpret business
interpret organization objectives and then
utilize technology to support the achievement of

knowledge and use it to these objectives.

The wave of digitalization that has swept
play the enabler between across the world has made it imperative to

available technologies and their

optimum use to satisfy the customer in the least
turnaround time.”
apps, Cloud computing, Big Data and analytics–
the CIO role has become all the more important
for implementing the above concepts in a highly
fruitful way for organizations. Technology has
permeated all levels of society, especially social
media and cloud apps. For CIOs, just talking
about technology is no longer in. Gone are the
days of holding bulky PowerPoint presentations
to showcase new technologies on the horizon
and their use in the digital world. Today, the CIO
has to interpret business knowledge and use it to
play the enabler between available technologies
and their optimum use to satisfy the customer in
the least turnaround time. CIOs should strongly
focus on digital transformation; to achieve this, it
is important to provide accurate information and
suitable tools in the hands of customers, partners,
employees and helping the business find new
digital revenue streams.
A NEW TERRITORY – CUS-
TOMER EXPERIENCE
Of late, Customer Experience (CX) has been
assuming paramount importance. CX is all about
the ways in which a customer or prospective
customer interacts with the organization through
various channels– social media, phone, surveys,
emails, etc. The roles and responsibilities of the
CIO have extended to this area as well, thanks to
the advent of technology as an enabler for better
customer communication and feedback. Amidst
all this, the IT department is still a critical depart-
ment for the organization, it has to move from
being the conventional back-office to one that is
more customer-oriented in its operational style.
The CIO assumes the leadership of spearheading
the change in the IT department for a new level of
customer experience.
The erstwhile strategies revolving around
vendor, suppliers and information systems have
given way to a fresh, brand-new strategy encom-
passing shareholders and end-users of products
and services. CIOs need to look upon technology
in a different way than before. Today, leveraging
technology is the differentiator. ERP systems,
CRM and SCM should be designed based on
the business processes, backed by an innovative
mindset. For the CIO, the customer should take
centre-stage in all strategy designs and plans.
THE HUMAN RESOURCES
CHALLENGE
With all the Artificial Intelligence (AI) talk
around about displacing human resources in
various industries, they still hold a key in the
organization’s strategic decisions. Good leadership
shoulders the onus of attracting the best, suitable
human resources and ensuring their motivation,
satisfaction and enthusiasm. With developing
countries stabilizing around the globe, employ-
ment opportunities have gone up– an estimated 2
million jobs are expected to get created –making
it even more difficult to secure cream talent for
your organization over the years. These challenges
have forced the CIO to look beyond conventional
motivation factors like salary, designation,
good projects to more encouraging factors like
flexible work timings, demanding projects, better
career opportunities and regular performance
evaluation.
A NEW DEFINITION OF BUSI-
NESS RELATIONSHIP
The erstwhile concept of business relationships is
relook at and restructure the IT department and
the CIOs role in particular. IT is not be con-
sidered simply as a database storage server or
hardware equipment or computer maintenance
department. It no longer is to be only “aligned”,
but “integrated” with the business and organiza-
tion goals. Seniors in the IT department should
be on the same page as strategy planners in the
executive management, as far as the organiza-
tion goals and objectives are concerned. IT
should serve as an enabler and not merely a cost
centre. Simply put, there should exist strong
relationships between people with the same
set of goals. In addition to this, CIOs should
be also able to identify resources with strong
innovative and leadership qualities who can
partner with stakeholders in all areas to meet
their expectations.
Innovation versus Cost Optimization
Today, the CIO is expected to perform the
balancing act, which happens to be the most
important challenge of the role. Some projects
will demand a highly innovative spirit from the
IT department whereas achieving cost efficiency
might be the objective of another project. IT has
to work hand-in-hand with different projects,
which means that they have to shift gears as and
when required– whether it be a conventional
computerization of a legacy environment or an
experimental project in a niche area.
CONCLUSION
The opportunity and challenge for the CIO
today is all about agility. The CIO is necessitated
to don many hats – Operator, Technologist,
Strategist and Catalyst – in order to drive values
in a way which business-oriented colleagues can
understand.
CIOs occupy a unique spot: they create
an opportunity to create innovative growth
strategies for their organizations through a mix
of business knowledge and profound technol-
ogy expertise. Needless to say, the employed
technology must provide an advantage and also
meet the needs of users. Putting their best foot
forward in these critical areas will enable CIOs
to create the required impact on all stakeholders
throughout the company’s ecosystem.

FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 35

INTERVIEW // APTECH

VISHWAJEET SINGH,
CIO AND VP – DELIVERY, APTECH

“It is right to focus on the ROI

and Security aspect but it is as
important to translate your
technology approach to meet your
business requirements.”

36 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018


EMBRACING NEW TECHNOLOGY IS ABOUT
MEETING BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS
Spearheading transformation across enterprise verticals for over two decades, veteran CIO Vishwajeet Singh opens up on the high-
lights on his journey, his understanding of the ever evolving IT landscape and the role of technology partners like CtrlS Datacenters
in helping organizations leverage digital to achieve business targets.
How has been your journey in IT,
heading digital transformation for
different organizations?
I started my career more than two decades ago,as
a management trainee for Xerox in 1996. By
education I am a computer science post graduate
and also hold a management degree from IIM
Kozhikode. After a year at Xerox, I shifted to
the software side with Innoserv System where
I worked as Team Lead on a project related to
Computer-based training CDs. After that I
shifted to Indiamart.com, where I started as an
assistant manager and went up to the senior
management level heading complete transforma-
tion for all their big customers, not only on the
B2B dot com domain, but also the web part in a
complete techno-commercial profile. After that, I
moved on to FCM Travels in 2002, which was one
of the second largest travel company in the world.
At FCM, I went up to the national IT manager,
started heading India, MEA, with China and
Hong Kong being additional portfolios. At FCM,
one of my projects garnered critical acclaim and
a number of industry recognitions. The project
was based on complete automation of travel
functions, from back office to the customer level,
creating a customized ERP of sorts for the travel
industry. Not only was the project a huge success
from the cost aspect, fulfilling its ROI within
18 months, but also from Green IT perspective
wherein we were able to digitize invoicing,
removing paper from the process.
In 2010, I moved on to Entertainment World
Developers which was a 3000 Crore company
and the largest mall operator at that time. I
headed their technology framework across
diverse business verticals like Mall Operations,
Hospitals and Retail brands. Another highlight
project came at my next job with Epitome Travel
Solutions, wherein we started a new venture from
scratch and worked on open source. Till day
that is listed on both Red Hat and IBM global
websites. Then I moved on to a digital media
company based out of US, where I set up their
complete IT structure enabling them to start their
operations in India.
In 2016, I shifted to Aptech taking up the
post of their first CIO managing the complete
operations of a 30 year old company which has
multiple brands like Arena, Lakme academy, avia-
tion training, their offline schools by the name
of Aptech Montana and so on. Aptech is one of
the biggest names in the Education Sector with
presence across 42 countries, through institutes
or learning platforms which are being leveraged
by global educational institutions to run their
complete, targeted student lifecycle. We are
bringing unique functionalities to the education
vertical like videoconferencing for parents and
teachers, transparency through remote view-
ing of classrooms through mobile app, more
experienced-based learning by bringing Virtual
Reality to our institutes.
In our assessment business, where we conduct
examinations for various reputed government
and private agencies, we are converting the
medium from traditional offline examinations
to online exams through CBT platforms, on the
lines of the Digital India movement. On an aver-
age, we execute close to six million examinations
every six months. There are a number of projects
in the pipeline and the way market is changing
with devices and bandwidths becoming cheaper,
we are trying to adapt to new concepts which
help us improve the experience we give to our
audience and Digital plays a big part in it.
How vital are technology partners
like CtrlS Datacenters in support-
ing your projects and future plans?
We have two partners through which we work
with. We use different partner for my passive
utilization but for my active utilization and the
entire production aspect, I am totally depen-
dent on CtrlS. All my live environments and
whichever part of my infrastructure is exposed to
the external world is hosted on CtrlS Datacenters,
which doesn’t just show the vitality of the relation-
ship but also highlights our confidence in CtrlS’s
capabilities. I have both my public and private
APTECH // INTERVIEW
clouds with CtrlS. So far the association has come
along really well and there have been no issues.
In terms of my expectations for future, I have
been working closely with CtrlS on the subject.
Since Cloud is a matured industry now, we expect
our partners to be increasingly active while
providing their services. I believe a partnership
should not be one-sided partnership but there
should be active contributions at both ends. Every
business vertical has a different set of requirement
to cater to and even the challenges associated are
very different. This is where we need able guid-
ance from partners like CtrlS. We need to work
as active partners to compliment each other’s
growth. Businesses like us have requirements
which partners like CtrlS fulfill, and there needs
to be a fusion which creates a win-win situation
for both the parties.
What is your advice to fellow CIOs
on evolving role and roadmap
ahead?
The Indian technology market has a history of
disruption by new trends event before the ones
in place are able to reach their maturity level.
There have been frequent changes leading from
mainstream computing to virtualization and
then cloud. Indian CIOs need to be careful and
accurate when evaluating technologies. They
need to understand their organization’s require-
ment rather than just being at par with what is
happening in the industry. We need to judge
our own needs first before embracing any new
technology in the organization architecture.
There can’t be anything which can be bench-
marked, because you can’t be certain that if an
approach has worked for another business, it will
work for you. Apart from just reaping the benefits
attached with new technologies and develop-
ments in the market but to get optimum result,
you have to know how effective it is for your
business. You have to work along with the market
and you have to be ready for all such changes.
CIOs shouldn’t just be spectators following what
is happening in the market but play along with it.
FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 37
CISO SPEAKS
EMERGING CYBERSECURITY CHALLENGES:
A NEW THREAT LANDSCAPE
Cybersecurity challenges have increased manifold and there is paradigm shift in Threat Landscape and in spite of
substantial spending on legacy security products, advanced attackers are bypassing these defenses easily making the
life of Security Professional miserable.
T
here’s no single technical answer.
Attackers will always exist and
innovate and find a way into any
organization data no matter how
secured is the defense mecha-
nism. Breaches are inevitable.
The shift in security outlook
needs to change from “keep them out” to “early
detection and response before damage is done”.
NEW THREAT LANDSCAPE
Attacks have changed in form, function, and
38 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018
sophistication. The main difference is the new
threats (advanced attacks, APTs etc) are actively
driven by humans, as opposed to previous genera-
tion attacks which were malware based attacks
(viruses, Trojans, worms etc)
These advanced attacks utilize both malware
designed to infect many systems as well as
sophisticated, zero-day malware to infect targeted
systems. They use multiple attack vectors like
Web, email, and application-based attacks. And
today’s attacks are aimed at getting valuable
data assets—sensitive financial information,
intellectual property, authentication credentials,
insider information—and each attack is often a
multi-staged effort to invade networks, spread,
and ultimately hack the valuable data.
Limitations of Traditional Single-Vector
Defenses
Most of the Security organizations are looking
for malware based attacks instead of human
attackers who may use malware as part of their
advanced attacks. Hence new generation of
threats are able to bypass traditional security
defense.
 CISO SPEAKS

SUDIPTA BISWAS malware executables—key loggers, Trojan back-

VICE PRESIDENT AND CISO, PRIME INFOSERV doors, password crackers, and file grabbers—are
then downloaded. This means that criminals
have now built long-term control mechanisms

“Attacks have changed into the system.

Malware calls back: As soon as the malware
in form, function, and installs, hackers establish a control point within

sophistication with new

organizational defenses. Once in place, the mal-
ware calls back to criminal servers for further

threats (advanced attacks, instructions. The malware can also replicate and
disguise itself to avoid scans, turn off anti-virus
APTs etc) driven actively scanners, reinstall missing components after

by humans, as opposed to previous

generation attacks which were malware based
attacks.”
Firewalls: Firewalls allow generic http Web
traffic. Next-generation firewalls add layers of
policy rules based on users and applications&
consolidate traditional protections such as IPS
and AV but do not add dynamic protection that
can detect threat content or behavior.
l IPS: Works on Signatures, packet inspection,
DNS analysis. It will not detect anything unusual
in a zero-day exploit, especially if the code is
heavily disguised or delivered in stages.
l Anti-virus and Web malware filtering: Since
the malware and the vulnerability it exploits are
unknown (zero day), and the website has a clean
reputation, traditional AV and Web filters will let
it pass. The volume of vulnerabilities in browser
plug-ins like Adobe and the exponential combi-
nations of these browsers with operating systems
make it hard for AV vendors to keep up.
l Email spam filtering: Spoofed phishing sites
use dynamic domains and URLs, so blacklisting
lags behind criminal activities. It takes more than
26 hours to shut down the average phishing site.
Malicious code can also be carried in laptops,
USB devices, or via cloud-based file sharing to
infect a machine and spread laterally when it
connects into the network. It is common for
mobile systems to miss updates to DAT files and
patches, so they are vulnerable to both known and
unknown exploits. In general, even up-to-date
machines can be infected using zero-day exploits
and social engineering techniques, especially
when the system is off the corporate network.
Once in place, malware may replicate itself—
with subtle changes to make each instance look
unique—and disguise itself to avoid scans. Some
will turn off AV scanners, reinstall after a cleaning,
or lie dormant for days or weeks.
Eventually, the code will pass on login creden-
tials, financial data, and other valuables. Many
compromised hosts provide a privileged base so
the criminal can explore further or expand his bot
net with new targets.
Most companies don’t analyze outbound traffic
for these malicious transmissions. Organizations
that monitor outbound transmissions use tools
that look for “known” bad actor addresses and
regulated data.
l Web filtering: Most outbound filtering blocks
adult content or time-wasting entertainment sites.
Many enterprises restrict social networking sites.
THE FIVE STAGES OF MULTI-
VECTOR ATTACKS
The new generation attacks are complex, use
multiple attack vectors to maximize the chances
of breaking through defenses. Multi-vector
attacks are typically delivered via the Web or
email. They leverage application or operating
system vulnerabilities, exploiting the inability of
conventional network-protection mechanisms to
provide a fool-proof defense.
In addition to using multiple vectors, advanced
targeted attacks also utilize multiple stages to
penetrate a network and then steal valuable
information. This makes it far more likely for
threats to go undetected. The five stages of the
attack life cycle are as follows:
System exploitation: The attack attempts to
set up the first stage, and exploits the system
using casual browsing. It’s often a blended attack
delivered across the Web or email with the email
containing malicious URLs.
Malware executable payloads are downloaded
and long-term control established: A single
exploit translates into dozens of infections on the
same system. With exploitation successful, more
a cleaning, or lie dormant for days or weeks.
By using callbacks from within the trusted
network, malware communications are allowed
through the firewall and will penetrate all the
different layers of the network.
Data ex-filtration: Data acquired from
infected servers is transmitted via encrypted
files over a commonly allowed protocol, such
as FTP or HTTP, to an external compromised
server controlled by the criminal.
Malware spreads laterally: The hacker now
works to move beyond the single system and
establish long-term control within the network.
The advanced malware looks for mapped drives
on infected laptops and desktops, and can then
spread laterally and deeper into network file
shares. It will map out the network infrastruc-
ture, determine key assets, and establish a
network foothold on target servers.
HOW THE NEW GENERATION
OF THREATS BYPASS TRADI-
TIONAL SECURITY
Cybercriminals combine Web, email, and
file-based attack vectors in a staged attack,
making it far more likely for their attacks to go
undetected. Today’s firewalls, IPS, AV, and Web
gateways have little chance to stop attackers
using zero-day, one-time-use malware, and
APT tactics.
These blended, multi-stage attacks succeed
because traditional security technologies rely on
fairly static signature-based or pattern matching
technology. Many zero-day and targeted threats
penetrate systems by hiding newly minted,
polymorphic dropper malware on innocent
Web pages and in downloadable files like
JPEG pictures and PDF documents. Or they
use social media sites embedding tweets that
include a shortened URL masking the malicious
destination. Each time a victim visits the URL
or opens the attachment, a malware payload
installs on the victim’s computer. This malware
code often includes exploits for multiple
unknown vulnerabilities in the OS, plug-ins,
browsers, or applications to ensure it gains a
foothold on the system.

FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 39

INDUSTRY ADVICE
GUIDE TO GOING
PAPERLESS
Despite abundance of ways to cut down on paper use, most businesses
even with digital transformation efforts under way still have a long way
to go in optimizing their methods of moving everything paper-based to
digital as quickly as possible.
P
aperwork is an integral part of
doing business, but physical
paper is not. Reliance on paper
documents results in millions of
dollars of waste, which could be
eliminated or at least radically
reduced by going paperless. As
your physical paperwork piles up, so will your
issues:
40 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018
WORLDWIDE PAPERLESS
EFFORT
The ever-increasing flood of data, and how we
manage it, is one of the greatest opportunities
facing businesses and governments in the 21st
century. Data is ubiquitous and is embedded in
countless formats. It’s in email, paper documents,
online posts, videos and more. Most of that data
is unstructured. Of course, this makes document
management chaotic. The first step in this journey
VIVEK NAIDU
VICE PRESIDENT - INFORMATION
MANAGEMENT, KODAK ALARIS INDIA
“There are many
productivity
resources for
reducing one’s
personal paper
usage, but taking a
closer look at how
paper is used across an
organization will have the greatest
impact.”
towards digitization is to go ‘paperless’.
Despite the optimism and the abundance of
ways to cut down on paper use, most businesses
and public agencies have a long way to go. Even
those that have digital transformation efforts
under way still have many opportunities to
optimize their methods of moving everything
paper-based to digital format as quickly as
possible.BENEFITS OF GOING
PAPERLESS
l Organization: No more piles of paperwork.
No more clunky filing cabinets, either.
l Efficiency: Digital documents are much easier
to manage, store, and retrieve.
l Scalability: Without rows of filing cabinets
towering throughout the office, a paperless opera-
tion requires much less space.
l Environmentally Friendly: Reduced printing
means fewer trees will be cut down to produce
paper.
l Faster Communication: Once digitized, a
document is available where it is needed, instantly.
l Document Backup and Recovery: It is costly
and time consuming, or in many cases impossible
to replace a paper document.
l Less Costly: Storing documents is costly,
especially for businesses in prime locations.There
are many productivity resources for reducing
one’s personal paper usage, but taking a closer
look at how paper is used across an organization
will have the greatest impact. A key place to start
looking is the point where paper comes into your
organization, and digitizing it on entry.
 BEYOND BUSINESS // THE STUFF

CIO TOYS result in rescanning and wastage of precious time.

The scanner also self adjusts for paper thickness
and sizes and is able to scan mixed set of docu-
ments with ease. Embedded Image processing
delivers high quality scanning across devices.
The scanning mechanism has LED Illumination
which gives new levels of clarity, optimizes text
readability and decreases the prominence of folds
and wrinkles on pages. This makes S2080 great fit
at digitization of old documents and converting
organizations into paperless environments. Info
Input Express LE software uses OCR (Optical
Character Recognition) for automatic data extrac-
tion. The software allows you to scroll through up
to 20 job setups and make a selection based on the
description or activity. Keeping up with its ability
to perform as a scanning assistant, the S2080 is a
great network scanner apart from the traditional
USB capability. Seemingly business ready, it works
seamlessly with Cloud and On-premise applica-
ALARIS

ALARIS S2080W
The S2080w is a perfect companion for any CIO
looking to go paperless without adding to his
daily workload. Built-wise, Alaris 2080 keeps
up with the best industry standards and with
a compact frame and interactive touch screen
capability. The scanning speed is quick and it is
worth mentioning that the actual speed matches
up and even betters the claimed 80 ppm and
160 ipm by a couple of pages. The scanner has
a built-in processor which works as a scanning
assistant taking over the redundant tasks like
indexing, thus eliminating workload from PCs.
Combines with the intuitive control panel to give
vital information on errors and better task setup.
The Active feed technology takes care of issues
like misalignment and multiple feed issues that
tions, and its integrated Web API means that no
drivers are needed for installation. Installation can
also be performed through the barcode scanning
feature. The S2080 can work across devices from
PCs, Mobiles and Tablets and can take scanning
commands from up to 10 devices at a time. S2080
is complimented by two Flatbed Accessories for
Passport and A4 size scanning requirements. All
in all a capable offering, the S2080 is the perfect
digitization assistant for CIOs in sectors like
BFSI, Government, Education Healthcare and
Manufacturing among others.

DELL

DELL XPS 13
Dell XPS 13 (9370) is the perfect
blend of technology and lifestyle.
Identifying the growing demand for
thinner, lighter and more powerful
B Y S A N J AY @ AC C E N T I N FO M E D I A . C O M
monitoring and managing system
temperatures. Encased in brushed
aluminum, XPS 13 is the first laptop
built with GORE Thermal Insulation

mobile devices by today’s profes- which provides thermal conductivity

sionals 9370 scales a minimal 13.3”
featuring Ultra Sharp 4K Ultra HD
infinity edge touch display with
HDR. The XPS 13 delivers more
performance with Dell Power
Manager which dynamically delivers
the maximum amount of power from
your processor, while intelligently
levels lower than air in a thin, flexible
format, keeping the laptop cool in
intense workload scenarios. The 9370
is equipped with the latest Intel 8th
Generation Quad Core CPUs and
supports 16GB LPDDR3 RAM and
512 GB PCIe SSD. It comes with
Intel Ultra HD Graphic card 620 for
crisper resolutions and better video processing. Other features
include USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen 1) with power delivery and display
port support, password-free log-in with Windows Hello & IR
camera. XPS 13 comes with 19 hours of battery life with a built-in
of 52W battery.

FEBRUARY 2018 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD 41

THE STUFF // PRODUCTS & SERVICES

NETGEAR

NETGEAR NIGHTHAWK X6S

The Nighthawk X6S Tri-Band Gigabit Router
offers faster wireless capabilities, a powerful
processor, and multi-user MIMO technology
for improved performance and lightning fast
networking when simultaneously streaming
to multiple devices. The router supports voice
commands for your WiFi network through
the Amazon Alexa voice service platform.
X6S offers notable combined WiFi speed
up to 4Gbps and is powered by a next-gen
64-bit 1.8GHz dual core processor with three
offload processors. Standard Nighthawk router
features such as NETGEAR genie remote
access, ReadyCLOUD and OpenVPN help you
control the X6S from anywhere. Connectivity
enhancement features include SmartConnect
for intelligent selection of the fastest WiFi band
for every device. Network load balancing and
segmentation also enables the X6S to mitigate
interference, especially useful with your smart
IoT devices.

D-LINK

D-LINK CCTV BULLET CAMERAS

D-Link CCTV bullet cameras offer the perfect DIY surveillance system,
with cameras designed for easy deployment which can be mounted any-
where indoor and outdoor on walls, posts, gates and ceilings. The cameras
work with the D-Link CCTV application which allows surveillance and
video monitoring in real time. The cameras also support DCMS surveil-
lance solution for managing multiple cameras /NVR /DVR. Bifurcated in
3 models, D-Link CCTV bullet cameras come in 1MP Fixed, 2MP Fixed
and 2MP Varifocal Bullet Cameras with HD imaging up to 1080P and IT
Ranges up to 35m, built-in support for AHD/ TVI/ CVI/CVBS Output
(OSD) and video transmission capabilities up to 300m. D-Link offers a
warranty of 2 years on its line of CCTV Bullet Cameras.

42 ENTERPRISE IT WORLD FEBRUARY 2018

RNI NO: DEL ENG/ 2017/ 69906 Date of Publication: 28 of Every Month
Postal Reg. No.: DL-SW-01 / 4200 / 17-19 Date of Posting: 1 & 2 of Every Month

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